fwtxmom, My husband and I remember asking the psychologist about her comment regarding Digit Span Backwards since it appeared contradictory to say that he “seems to be struggling with using visualization” when her report also states that he has “exceptionally advanced spatial reasoning skills” and is “strongly visual-spatial.” He definitely fits more into the visual-spatial category when I look at the link provided by blackcat. The psychologist didn’t really give us a clear explanation of her comment and I wasn’t too concerned at the time since he’d scored so high. But recently I’ve been thinking back to that comment since this issue came up when trying to visualize sight words. Perhaps the issue with repeating numbers in reverse is not actually a problem with using visualization but a symptom of dyspraxia as mentioned by Irena? Similar to blackcat’s DD, my husband and I also used auditory repetition when trying to repeat digits backwards, so maybe visualization isn’t used by everyone in this task.
Irena, my son also has relatively low processing speed (particularly on the Coding subtest on which he scored at the 25th percentile), he struggles with phonics, and has been told he has convergence insufficiency and poor eye movement control (which also confuses me because he scores so highly on tests of visual perceptual skills). He has been receiving OT and PT since February, but with little improvement in his handwriting. We have tried some Vision Therapy at home after seeing a developmental optometrist in another state (there are no developmental optometrists in our area) but those exercises fell off our list of priorities. I think I need to read more about Developmental Dyspraxia since it sounds like it could be an underlying issue related to many of DS’s symptoms. I don’t think he was ever given an official diagnosis by his OT, but Developmental Coordination Disorder/Dyspraxia/Dysgraphia definitely seem to fit.
